Why won’t my bank allow me to use non-alpha-numeric characters in my online banking password?!
Don’t they want my password to be as secure as possible?
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Author: Ryan Neudorf
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I’m Back!!
In the words of the Chemical Brothers, I’m back with another one of those blog block rockin’ beats.
I could have sworn that I had a backup of the database from the previous incarnation of the blog, but unfortunately it has been lost various server/HD moves since I last cared about this site. I think I’m going to re-write a couple of the posts, especially the security one that got dugg.
For now, please subscribe to my RSS.
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Summer Styles ’06
As a programmer I’m not expected to have a good looking site, in fact i’m probably expected to have an ugly website. It took me a year to recognize this, but now that I have I can focus on adding kewl functions to my site, rather than stressing about how ugly it is. That said, I thought it was time for a new style. Here it is. Thanks to my lovely wife for the font suggestion and logo creation.
CSS is awesome. The only tools I used for this redesign where: the web developer extension for firefox and notian’s online CSS Tidy Tool (because the web dev extension doesn’t let me format my css very well); and photoshop for the logo creation.
You’ll note that the comment system is currently none-functional. It will remain disabled until I implement a Human Verification System.
That’s all for now folks, I’ll try to update more frequently.
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Parachute Beta is live!
I’ve FINALLY been able to sit down and complete dropbox (now PARACHUTE) code to a level I’m willing to release on a private beta basis. If all goes well, I’ll a release a public beta within a week. Sign Up Here.
Parachute? Am I jumping? What am I dropping? Links, sounds delicious doesn’t it? And it is, but with a twist, you don’t put in your own links. Parachute is designed so that you receive links from other people, right in your dropzone. Still don’t get it? Here’s how it works…
Let’s say Jill and Joel are best buds, Jill want to share a cool site about plants with Joel, but Joel has a job, and is working on something important so he can’t be bothered to read about plants, no matter how cool they are. He could accept the link from Jill and shove it in his favourites, or go to some other social bookmarking site, but he doesn’t want to divert his attention. Jill could always email it, but she doesn’t want to open her mail client and go through that hassle, so what do they do? Before Parachute they probably would forget about the stupid plants and carry on, foliagely unfulfilled. But now with Parachute, Jill can drop Joel the link, and then when he has more time on his hands, he can go through his new drops and have a leafy old time reading about plants.
What does all this mean? A better world, and probably more work done in offices, except for the people who just spend their time refreshing their box, hoping for some new drops. Eventually we would like to see our parachute all over the web, instead of “emailing this link to a friend” why not drop it to their account with a click and a lot less typing? Plus with the Parachute your friends know that you’re not accidentally signing them up for spam.
thanks to notian for that copy, he’s a much better writer than i’ll ever be
Pandora.com is amazing. If you’ve never checked out it i suggest visiting immediately. Pandora is a streaming music site similar to Yahoo! Music, Last.fm and the like. It a services that creates a customized playlist for you based on your musical tastes, with one twist, it actually works really well!
The difference is in the way it selects songs for you. Services like yahoo! typically use an amazon style popularity system. “People who like X also like Y.” The problem with this type of system is the assumption that all good music is popular. Not to mention that it’s also completely unscientific, it doesn’t actually compare the content of music.
Pandora is different. Pandora is based on the Music Genome Project. The project was started 6 years ago to “capture the essence of music at the fundamental level.” They use 400 attributes to describe each song, from the vocal qualities to musical make up to recording style and probably a bunch of other esoteric musician crap. For instance, some of the attributes describing IOU by Metric include “basic rock song structure, electronic influences, a subtle use of vocal harmony acoustic rhythm piano and extensive vamping.”
After about 8 – 10 hours I’ve tuned one of my channel very well. I’ve found myself listening to a lot of bands I’ve heard of, but never gotten around to listening to. I’ve also stumbled across few new bands I’m really digging.
The service is 100% legal – they pay royalties – and more or less ad free – there are a few amazon ads on the main page.
The only downside is the 10 song skip limit. Due to some retarded DMCA stipulation you are not allowed to skip more than 10 songs per hour, this apparently would be considered music on demand, which is illegal.
A message on the “subscribe” page threatens that they’ll soon start to advertise. If and when that happens I’ll probably pay the $4/mo.
Pandora is arguably the future of the radio. I’d love to be able to download 10 or 15 songs from my playlist, I wouldn’t even mind paying a few buck for them.
Check it out yoz.
References:
Inside the Net 6: Tim Westergren of Pandora Media
Wikipedia
Official Site